She spent fifteen years teaching women to feel good about a face cream. Then she went and built a brand for everything else.
Walk the personal-care shelf and you get two moods. Clinical, like a pharmacy. Or masculine, like a locker room. Catherine Magee looked at both and decided neither one was speaking to the person actually buying. So she built a third option and called it Playground.
Today she is co-founder and CEO of that company, a sexual wellness brand she launched in 2022 alongside product developer Sandy Vukovic and, eventually, the pop star Christina Aguilera. The products read like a skincare label - hyaluronic acid, vitamin E, bamboo extract - applied to a category that usually reads like a warning sticker. That swap is the whole idea.
The brand is now stocked at Target, Urban Outfitters and Amazon. It has generated billions of impressions and, per Inc., grew its social following 2,600 percent. The category barely had a vocabulary a few years ago. Magee gave it one borrowed straight from beauty.
She is qualified for the swap in a way few people are. Before Playground, Magee spent more than fifteen years inside the beauty industry, holding executive and senior-VP marketing seats at bareMinerals, Buxom, Rodan + Fields and theBalm Cosmetics. Her specialty was the aspirational launch - taking a product and wrapping it in something women wanted to be seen holding.
Then she pointed that same skill at a shelf nobody had bothered to make beautiful. "At Playground, we want to empower millions of women to own their female sexuality and experiences on their terms," she has said. The product is the lubricant. The point is the permission.
Her own shorthand for it, repeated inside the company until it became a strategy: Nice girls finish first.
"Don't think, just do."Catherine Magee · her personal mantra in the chaos
The CEO. Fifteen years building brands for bareMinerals, Buxom, Rodan + Fields and theBalm. She handles the company, the category, and the unglamorous parts that don't make the launch video.
Co-founder and product developer. A veteran of formulating for leading beauty brands who left to invent intimate products that perform like skincare instead of like science class.
Co-founder and Chief Brand Advisor, announced in 2023. Five Grammys, one GLAAD award, and a megaphone aimed straight at the stigma Magee set out to dismantle.
Studies at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.
Climbs to executive and senior-VP marketing roles across bareMinerals, Buxom, Rodan + Fields and theBalm Cosmetics.
Co-founds Playground and takes the CEO seat. Emily Morse joins as Chief Sexologist that September.
Christina Aguilera revealed as co-founder and Chief Brand Advisor. Official launch, the "Pillow Talk" campaign, and a debut at Urban Outfitters.
Love Sesh wins Best Water-Based Lubricant at Cosmopolitan's Lube Awards.
Closes a ~$2M institutional round, expands to Target, and Magee makes Inc.'s Female Founders 250.
She finished a presentation while in labor. Then she went to the hospital. Order of operations she does not recommend.
A babysitter canceled before an investor meeting. She scrambled for last-minute childcare rather than reschedule the room.
1am, a pediatric ER, a laptop. She has worked from one. The experience turned her into a vocal advocate for workplace flexibility instead of a cautionary tale she pretends didn't happen.
She says the quiet part to her team. Magee treats mistakes as tuition and admits her own out loud - vulnerability as a management style, not a slip.
We want to empower millions of women to own their female sexuality and experiences on their terms.
Nice girls finish first.
Don't think, just do.
Her co-founder list includes a five-time Grammy winner. Most seed-stage CEOs cannot say that.
Hyaluronic acid. Vitamin E. Bamboo extract. The ingredient list is lifted from your serum and dropped into a category that usually sounds like a pharmacy.
"Nice girls finish first" is both a marketing line and the in-house rallying cry. Strategy disguised as a wink.
Fifteen years selling beauty, then a hard left into a taboo. She brought the playbook, not just the resume.